We study the structure of nonlinear incentive-compatible taxes, in a dynamic economy subject to political economy and commitment problems. In contrast to existing analyses of dynamic and/or nonlinear taxation problems, we relax the assumptions that taxes are set by a benevolent government and...

We study the optimal Mirrlees taxation problem in a dynamic economy with idiosyncratic (productivity or preference) shocks. In contrast to the standard approach, which implicitly assumes that the mechanism is operated by a benevolent planner with full commitment power, we assume that any...

We develop a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the conditions under which such wars can be prevented. The interaction between the scarcity of resources and the incentives for war in the presence of limited commitment is at the center of our theory. We show that a key parameter...